Bernie Sanders says Elon Musk is wrong about H-1B visas: 'Low-wage indentured servants'
https://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-elon-musk-wrong-reform-h1b-visa-2025-1Open linkView original on lemmy.world448
Comments56https://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-elon-musk-wrong-reform-h1b-visa-2025-1Open linkView original on lemmy.world
Fucking oligarchs and their ridiculous double speak." No immigration! Unless it's my work force, tee-hee."
Can we eat this idiot yet please?
You can't even vote the guy out as Musk isn't even elected but he still wields quasi presidential power. It's like the grand vizier of America.
Something something, 3 boxes....
No, they do not. More like $50k-200k. But the rest of your comment is pretty much right.
Most common is $80-160k, the companies formerly known as FANNG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) are more likely $160-340k. A large part of that is their geographic area. Basically they primarily want workers who are already vetted by the other FAANG companies, so they're all in the same geographic location, and competing over the workers willing to live there.
Basically they're idiots creating their own problems that Elon wants to solve with H1-Bs.
Legally, the H1-Bs need to get paid roughly the same as American workers. We all know that's a bit slippery, but it does help keep the wages up.
The real benefit is that they either do what Elon says or they get kicked out of the country. Guess who's willing to put up with the most shit.
Levels.fyi is a good source of salary data. Above 200k is easy in the right geographic location.
In these locations cost of living is usually also pretty high. Making 100k in San Francisco is not a very good salary.
make six figures but share a 400 sq ft studio with 6 other engineers and get some floor space to set up your sleeping bag.
I'd love to see the stats on this.
Definitely interesting. We had an issue in Australia with 457 visas back in 2014. Where claims of pay were disputed when a whistleblower showed 200 white-collar 457 visa workers, about half of whom were Korean nationals aged under 30, were clocking up more than 84 hours a week.
They were employed by the contractor Samsung C&T at Gina Rinehart's mine and were being paid the equivalent of $16 an hour for what should have been much higher paying jobs.
Musk is wrong about pretty much everything so there is that.
Calling them "low-wage indentured servants" will sell it to the corpos that run this country.
Bernie spot on as always
He’s not
*Meaningful Shareholders
Which may or may not be CEOs of a company, but are still the ones demanding MOAR at any cost including blood, and the direct beneficiaries of that malice.
Brian carried out the orders, and was a murderer himself, but never forget, he didn't even make the most money from the people he murdered, he got a cut to handle the to lead the day to day bureaucracy of the for profit murders. And he was a sub leader at that. Low level double digit millionaire sociopath.
Can we just replace all headlines about this fuckhead with "Moral person with clue says Elon Musk is wrong, again"
Elon musk needs to stfu, all he wants is attention this attention that
Someone got all het up yesterday because I called H-1B holders indentured servants. This should be interesting.
I have a somewhat hot take.
The racists want to destroy H1-B visas, the rich (slavers) like H1-B as is, and neither is willing to help fix H1-B visas.
Slavery is easily the worst outcome. It might be worth siding with the racists to defeat the slavers and drive a wedge in their coalition.
Definitely not low wage. There are requirements that they have to be paid market rates. Despite that, I recall Banerjee and Duflo finding a depression of upper middle income wages from things like the H1B program.
$60,000 a year is low wage?
Depending on career, yes.
That's poverty level in Southern California.
When an American wants 100k to pay off their student loan debt...
Yeah, that's a 40% pay cut.
It's one of the last remnants of the middle class. And if it happens people will be less likely to go to school for it without that high pay to pay off the loans.
Which means at a point we'd have to rely on these visas.
Also prevents the chance of someone being able to cobble together some type of competition
For a tech job, yes. Doubly so in a country that has no universal healthcare and has a joke of a social security system. Triply so on a precarious visa.
In a high cost-of-living area, it absolutely can be. And lots of tech jobs are in HCOL areas.
Where did you even get that number from?
There's a mention in Bernie's tweet of associate accountants getting 58k, but his point there is we have plenty of Americans who can fill that role, and there's zero reason for a h1b.
The average Tesla pays one of those is 71k
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Tesla-Associate-Accountant-Salaries-E43129_D_KO6,26.htm
So yes, comparitively speaking it's a low wage....
That's the salary level at which h1b is uncapped. So ~70,000 h1b visas are allowed to make less then $60,000, but any amount can be approved if it's "high paying" and above that salary. It's supposed to make it so it's more expensive to hire foreign talent, but that becomes irrelevant if it's not actually high paying and most Americans demand well above that cap. Then there's no incentive to hire Americans.
This is why a lot of people, even Elon, advocate for raising the cap to an actually high wage, and tie it to cost of living, because $60,000 in coastal California is poverty.
60K is the minimum you need to get paid for an entry level job using H1B, if not your visa won’t get approved. It used to be around 58K and now it has gone up. A lot of companies offer this minimum so people who are desperate for a job will take it. Also companies use consultancies to fill these roles so you’ll have to check their salaries.
Hmm why delete your answer?
Yes
That's the minimum, but they usually get about twice as much.
What the hell is he talking about? The average H1B employee has a six-digit salary.
I don't have the data, but in HCOL areas a six digit salary doesn't go that far. And the real point is how much downward pressure does it put on compensation for Americans who do have job mobility? How does the pay between these two population compare and change over time?
The H1B system makes it functionally impossible to change jobs, and employers can take advantage of that by depressing wages, worsening working conditions, and laying off other staff. Employers hold all the power in that relationship.
Six digits is "only" average in San Francisco, and well above average almost everywhere else. I'd say that being the average resident of an extremely expensive place to live in the USA is nowhere near "low-wage indentured servant".
Also, H1B holders can change jobs, as long as the new job gets them a new H1B. That makes it harder for them to change jobs than it is for Americans, but many tech companies are willing to get that visa for someone talented.
Edit: They also always have the option of leaving the USA and going back to their home country. They don't gain anything from Sanders' proposal - they just lose the option of coming to the USA in the first place, which is an option they really want to have. What Musk is proposing is clearly better for them, so Sanders shouldn't wrap his opposition in false claims of looking out for the poor foreigners who might get those awful American jobs unless he stops them.
I know multiple people here on H1B visas, and guess what, I left the job I was in over horrible working condition, and 6 years later, they are all still there bcz they can't get another job willing to sponsor their visa.
My dad came to America on this visa and then got a green card. Now our whole family are citizens. If he wasn't able to do that, I'd be sitting in a bunker somewhere in Eastern Ukraine after getting drafted
I know multiple people here on H1B visas too. They do have difficulties that Americans do not, but they would still much rather be in the USA than go back to their home countries. How would taking away that option to be in the USA (which they really want) help these people?
Who said anything about taking it away? They point is that the comment about it being borderline indentured servitude is accurate.
If Sanders gets his way and denies H1B visas to people who would have gotten them under Musk's proposal, then Sanders is taking away the option of coming to the USA that those people would have had. That's (1) an option no one is forcing them to take, (2) an option that they really want, and (3) an option that they can change their mind about at any time. An indentured servant is someone who doesn't have the option of leaving. You can't make someone indentured by giving them more options.
Surely you would support expanding the H1B so that it's easier for H1B workers to change jobs then, right? Let them come, but also nuetralize any options for corporations to abuse the H1B system. Sounds like a reasonable compromise to me.
If the price for people coming on H1B visas is not hiring or eliminating a domestic job which commands a higher salary then we have a problem. As far as I'm aware H1B typically make less than domestic. It could be 7 figures and it's still a problem because domestic might be 8 figures. The problem is that workers generate this value and a significant chunk goes towards the top when H1B gets less than domestic. In fact this effect is more significant in higher paying jobs than lower. It should cost the same or more than domestic to hire H1B and an H1B employee should be able to have the same worker rights as domestic. Then H1B doesn't drive domestic salaries and hiring down.
There should be a 50k tax per H1-B worker. That would cut out the bullshit ensure that only workers who actually have needed skills are hired, rather than using foreign labor to lower American wages. I'm pretty sure that companies would suddenly "realize" they don't really need very many foreign workers.
And if companies are found to abuse the system by putting shame job openings, (which they constantly do) they should pay a penalty and be banned from using the H1-B system.
I'm not arguing against the claim that H1B holders take jobs that Americans might have otherwise had. I have moral objections to it, but it isn't objectively false the way that Bernie's claim is.
Depending on where they're working that's not saying much.
There's nowhere you can work where that's not plenty of money. I'm saying that as someone who lives in Manhattan.
What about Silicon Valley?
The SWE H1B salaries are drastically under what is the market price.
And that doesn't even account for them continuously working overtime without overtime pay.
Not true and even if it were that's not a whole lot of money in large cities where it would be happening
And can be forced to work 80+ hours a week or face deportation..